The Alexandria Library collection of over 90,000 items is supplemented by access to materials at the other five NVCC campuses. We also subscribe to over 200 electronic databases, with access to thousands of online journals. There are over 296,000 items in the total college collection.
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Thursday, August 21, 2014

New Books at Your Alexandria Library: Time for Lunch!

A fresh semester and new books means that the staff
members at YOUR Alexandria Library are as giddy as kids hopped up on sugar at a
birthday party. Here are some highlights from our latest crop of new
acquisitions.

Megan Elias’ book outlines the social history of our
country’s most public meal. Learn how Americans forge bonds, tackle poverty, work,
and fight for equality during our midday meals.

Iraqi war veteran Kevin Powers’ collection of poems
examines the impact of violence, love, memory and loss on the soldier’s psyche.
New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani described this volume as “a classic
of contemporary war fiction” while other critics compare Powers’ gifts to those
of Owens, Hemmingway, and O’Brien.

Popular history solely credits Charles
Darwin with the theory of evolution, but fails to take into account the
influence of fellow scientist Alfred Russell Wallace on both Darwin and the
general understanding of early evolutionary thinking. Author John van Wyhe
attempts to correct the popular view by exposing readers to Wallace’s own deeply
important scientific voyages and observations, and by teasing out the
relationship between Wallace and Darwin that led them both men to present similar
material at the July 1, 1958 meeting of the Linnaean Society.

Before Abraham Lincoln was a president, a commander
of a wartime army, a polarizing figure, or a martyr he was a practicing lawyer
in rough, rustic, and rural Illinois. Editors Roger Billing and Frank J.
Williams curated a collection of essays that explore how Lincoln understood the
law, and how that understanding influenced his subsequent political career.

The Wild West was full of drugstore cowboys,
drummers, charlatans and snake oil salesman who treated the aches, pains, and
ailments of their fellow citizens by dubious and often deadly means. Wayne
Bethard writes entertainingly about the colorful and dangerous history of patent
medicine and quackery on the America western frontier.